kimvette writes: Assange out on bail and is continuing to maintain his innocents on the charges. However, I am trying to figure out how the hell he could possibly be guilty of rape when the women willingly had sex with him. If they "preferred he use a condom" but agreed to let him have his way with them anyhow, how can they possibly get away with crying "rape" after the fact? I still think that it's just a convenient way that the US is trying to get other countries to keep Assange quiet.

kimvette writes: Yesterday Microsoft was offering download-only Technet subscriptions for free (https://om2.one.microsoft.com/offer/technet_na.aspx) to be used "for testing purposes only" not production. However apparently they under-estimated how quickly the news would spread and just how many people would take advantage of the offer. After years of paying for MSDN subscriptions and quitting after the price just got too obscene I decided to drop my two subscriptions, waiting for a special to come along. This appeared too good to be true but it was a legitimate offer. I took advantage of it however today I started reading reports of the accounts being shut down. I checked mine early this afternoon and the account was still valid and I still had access to my downloads and my keys. Just now I checked and sure enough, I can see the list of downloads but cannot actually download anything nor can I view my keys.

Now here is the question: Is it not reasonable to expect Microsoft to honor a contract where they offered a product for an advertised price, where I accepted that offer and took advantage of it, and they in turn validated that offer by not only accepting THEIR ADVERTISED PRICE in their online ordering system, but proceeding to send me not only a confirmation email, but activation keys, which I in turn used upon receipt to redeem for my legally-purchased software?

Can they legally rescind this offer after my acceptance of their contract offer without any notification? With the oh-so-clearly-worded "for testing purposes only" licensing, which is more restricted than MSDN, is it not reasonable to expect that this offer from Microsoft is anything other than legitimate? I'm fully aware of software licensing costs, I've subscribed to MSDN ultimate three times, the newer equivalent once, and the equivalent of MSDN Professional twice. So, I am fully aware of the "perceived value" of their software. However I am also aware of the duplication and distribution costs, as well as the licensing restrictions, so "free" for "testing purposes only" does not strike me as something that would be unreasonable for one to expect Microsoft to honor the contract on.

What do you all think? Should Microsoft be expected to honor the offer that they have rescinded without notice?

However, he clearly benefited from the ASSP developers' efforts at some point, and I presume like you and I he did not pay the developers for the code. How can he justify removing the official documentation for an open source project and forbid anyone else from using it? Granted, the documentation was not open source, but his actions strikes me as hypocritical (In the thread I used a more choice term)."

kimvette writes: "Comcast introduces a 50Mbps/5Mbps tier almost immediately announcing a 250GB bandwidth cap, confirming what many of us suspected: they were crying wolf and fearing competitors' content offerings. To seemingly make up for the perecived shortfall in content delivery, they are offering an internet service even faster than FIOS, nearly approaching the capabilities of the DOCSIS equipment they rolled out almost a decade ago.

Why after crying "bandwidth shortage" are they rolling out this service? Don't they see that customers already see through their rhetoric and realize it's all about anticompetitive practices? Don't they know that this is confirming fraud when they advertised "unlimited internet" for so long and all the while enforced unpublished limits? Weren't they just saying their networks can't handle heavy P2P users at 5Mbps? Are they trying to hand customers over to FIOS where there are no bandwidth caps?"

kimvette writes: "Apparently Microsoft wants users to choose alternatives to Windows, since they are now shutting down third-party tools which help make deployments and maintenance of Windows easier. From autopatcher:

Sad day
Posted by Antonis Kaladis on August 29th, 2007 |
Today we received an e-mail from Microsoft, requesting the immediate take-down of the download page, which of course means that AutoPatcher is probably history. As much as we disagree, we can do very little, and although the download page is merely a collection of mirrors, we took the download page down.
We would like to thank you for your support. For the past 4 years, it has been a blast. Unfortunately, it seems like it's the end of AutoPatcher as we know it.
Antonis Kaladis

If you're on dialup in rural areas and want to update Windows, or are in a commercial setting where you have a Cable connection with an unpublished cap, you're pretty much screwed when it comes to Windows updates.

Thanks, Microsoft. It's great to know that you have your paying customers in mind, as usual. Making the Windows experience worse, that is."

kimvette writes: "Word has it that Kevin Medina an offer of $1.15mil for RegisterFly.

Some background, for those who haven't heard yet:

RegisterFly has all but abandoned its customers, has taken many customers' domains and effectively stolen them, parking them and using them to generate pay-per-click revenue. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of complaints have been flooding into ICANN every week because RegisterFly has been accepting payment from customers (average of $2,000 to $5,000 per day, see http://www.registerflies.com/information/can-you-s ay-5000-a-day-for-nothing.html ) but not renewing their domains. Their service has been so bad that ICANN has pulled their accreditation.

RegisterFly's name is ruined. Their customers are trying in vain to leave RegisterFly for other domains, but are hitting roadblocks. Many online businesses and organizations have closed because RegisterFly

How did RegisterFly gain their accreditation? Interestingly, RegisterFliesseveral weeks ago learned that RegisterFly did not go through the ICANN accreditation process, but by acquiring another Registrar, basically buying their way into the system.

The two principal shareholders John Naruszewicz and Kevin Medina at the weeks-end were still trading verbal blows, while ICANN stepped in to the fray after nearly three years of complaints. Whilst most focus has been on the failure of the company's support systems, allegations of fraud and corruption were flowing freely Friday, not only from the principals involved, but from ICANN.

Meantime the control of RegisterFly.com, seized by Naruszewicz on Tuesday, was back in the hands of Medina late Friday. Both parties are accusing the other of hijacking the company's Web site and administration, which has been effectively dysfunctional for weeks. Medina has also replicated the current site at www.registerfly-inc.com so if he loses control again, or the original site is brought down, he can continue to trade on.

What does this mean for the 90,000 domain holders? Many of us have domains in redemption or pendingDelete status because of this internal RegisterFly battle. We finally got ahold of Kevin Medina by getting him to come to RegisterFlies, and all he did was attack the partners who ousted him; he had nothing to say about rescuing customers' domains nor did he seem to care in the slightest. He seems intent only on maintaining control of the company, the database, and of course his investment, and forget about customer service issues.

Whereas John Naruszewicz and Glenn Stansbury raise customers' losses as their first concern, and saving their investment second. On the surface they appear sincere in their claim that they want to make things right.

Rumors are flying about Kevin, about back-room deals with other registrars, reasons why domains have disappeared from customer accounts, why domains have been allowed to remain in redemption status until they move to pendingDelete and are lost.

The coming week will be very telling. If the authorities step in Monday and arrest Mr. Medina, we will know that Mr. Naruszewicz and Mr. Stansbury are likely legitimate in their claims.

But, what happens for small businesses who have lost their domain names due to Mr. Medina's alleged misconduct? Who will ensure that we get our domains back?

We at Registerfly.Com would like to offer our sincere apologies to all that have been affected by the actions of our former CEO / President, Kevin Medina. We cannot change the past but will make every effort to change the future of RegisterFly.com. As a result of Mr. Medina's actions many of you have lost your domains, experienced problems with your Hosting, Renewals and Registrations. For this reason Mr. Medina's our "Board of Directors" had no recourse but to take action against Mr. Medina and fire him.

Clearly the remaining principles are placing 100% of the blame on Mr. Medina's shoulders, however this only leads to further questions: If Mr. Medina was locked out of the servers as of Monday, why is RegisterFly still having problems regaining control of their network? Why did they not fire Mr. Medina and address customer support issues sooner? Why did it take a threat from ICANN to motivate them to respond? When do they expect to give customers control over their domains once again? What will they do to regain customer domains they have already lost?"

As noted above, section 5.3.4 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement agreed in October 2004 between Registerfly and ICANN provides that notice of termination of Registerfly's accreditation may be given if these breaches are not cured within 15 working days.

Computer Business Review Online ran a story on this issue the other day and a new article is about to be published by them. Minute-by-minute developments of these issues can be learned at Registerflies.com, a "support" and customer advocate site set up in response to RegisterFly's ongoing poor customer service and fraudulent billing practices. Millions of customer domains remain under the jurisdiction of RegisterFly and customers' maintaining ownership and control of these domains is now in question.

Some are speculating the RegisterFly will be folding in the coming days, so if you have domains registered through them transfer them out NOW."

kimvette writes: Hans Reiser was was arrested today on suspicion of the murder of his wife following her disappearance. While the disappearance (and possible murder) of his wife is tragic, this will make Linux users wondering where this will leave Reiser 4. If Reiser is found guilty, will Novell or IBM pick up the pieces and finish up Reiser 4 for inclusion in the kernel or is this the end of the Reiser filesystem project? Will there be any future for the Reiser filesystem, and if Hans is found guilty and the project is continued, will the project be renamed to avoid notoriety?